As background, drones are remotely operated aircraft which use wireless communications to an operator for command and control. Drones are also called “unmanned aircraft systems” or “unmanned aerial vehicles.” Most drones feature geo-positioning using a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) such as the United States' global positioning satellite (GPS) system. Drones have been in use for over a century for military purposes, such as missile targets; yet their existence and usage were relatively unknown until America's war on terror following the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Shortly thereafter, the Predator® aircraft became a household name for its well-publicized missions in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and for its use in remote missile attacks. However, only in the past five years or so have drones become ubiquitous, primarily with vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) aircraft featuring multiple propellers (e.g., quadcopters, octocopters), such as the Phantom® from DJI®, but also with more traditional aircraft featuring a single propeller and forward flight. Aided greatly by several technological advances and economies of scale, consumer- and commercial-grade drones have become available at an affordable cost, enabling the adoption by law enforcement, various industries, educational institutions, hobbyists, and even household consumers.
Drones are now in use in industries as varied as law enforcement, emergency management, photography, videography, motion picture and television, real estate, farming and agriculture, construction, mining, sports, railroad, utilities, oil and gas, and so forth. The applications for drones continue to grow at a remarkable rate; and, thus, it is only time before their use and presence in our skies become widespread. With this advancement comes a growing safety threat, as these machines can suffer from unexpected catastrophic failures as well as “fly-aways” when the user loses complete control of the drone, and it travels out of visual range without warning. Several injuries have been reported as well as widely publicized near-misses. In one such example, a professional skier was nearly struck by a falling videography drone during a skiing event in December, 2015, in Italy. Other people have not been so lucky. In another example, an athlete was reportedly struck on the head by a drone in April, 2014, during a triathlon in Western Australia. It is very likely that accident rates will rise as more and more people begin flying drones.
While drone manufacturers are beginning to build in safety features, such as proximity sensors to help prevent crashing into objects and geo-fencing to prevent drone usage in certain geographical areas or airspace (e.g., the White House in Washington, D.C.), they may fall short of mitigating the threat of catastrophic failure in which either the electronics and/or the battery stops working and the drone falls victim to gravity.
Existing add-on drone safety devices on the market are currently limited to automatic parachutes, which while novel and promising for reducing the risk of serious injury, are much heavier solutions and do not warn people on the ground of the impending impact. Thus, there exists a void in the market for a compact electronic device that intelligently senses a drone's flight status and provides advance warning to those on the ground if there is a catastrophic failure. Such a device must be small and light enough to attach to a drone without significantly impacting the drone's battery life or aerodynamics. The present disclosure is directed toward providing such apparatuses and methods.
The apparatuses and methods disclosed herein may significantly reduce the risk of innocent bystanders (i.e., people and animals) being unaware of an impending crash from a drone falling from the sky. The apparatuses may feature three-axis sensing of acceleration as well as other sensor inputs to determine if a drone is in free-fall. The apparatuses may further include a loud audible alarm which is intended to immediately direct one's attention to the sky, similar to the effect of an ambulance or police siren since the natural reaction is to look in the direction of audible alarm like a siren. The audible alarm may be augmented by an optional visual alarm to visually cue bystanders to look up in the sky and take immediate action, such as to run or dive out of the way of the falling object. The visual alarm would add the ability for individuals to visually identify the current position and trajectory of the falling drone, especially in low-light conditions. Further, this apparatus may operate completely independently from the drone, except for the physical attachment. Thus, the apparatus may not derive power or sensor inputs directly from the drone, which may provide an inherent redundancy to any native safety features provided by the drone itself.
As such, the present disclosure describes a warning apparatus which may operate independently from the drone, including sensing and characterizing the drone's flight status and providing its own power. Such a warning apparatus may provide advance warning to people on the ground of a potential impact from a falling drone and may afford them the ability to vacate the area of imminent impact or at least to mitigate the damage of the impact by protecting the head and/or neck area. Furthermore, the warning apparatus may be expected to minimize injuries and possibly reduce deaths causes by unexpected drone impacts.